Shine On
by moodybluemood
Summary: Kira left him with scars and nightmares and a prescription list, but Josuke has a family and he's never going to take that away from him. Mr. Higashikata contemplates fatherhood as he puts a dead gangster to rest, unites an old cowboy with his son, and grieves with his sister.


Josuke's breakfast today is a peanut butter/Captain Crunch sandwich, eaten while perched on the kitchen counter, because his husband isn't awake to steer him away from bad decisions. It is a _terrible_ decision, he's realized, but he's halfway through and there's no turning back now. He is nothing if not committed to his mistakes.

If Okuyasu were up and about, he'd probably be having a cappuccino and cornetto right now in the Italian style. He's shifted away from it in his professional career, currently working in an obscenely trendy noodle bar that's nearly impossible to get into unless you line up an hour before it opens, but when it comes to what he makes at home, Okuyasu prefers to stay true to his career roots and make what he learned in Tonio's kitchen.

Making cornetti and, similarly, croissants (Josuke's still not completely sure of the difference between the two except one is Italian and one isn't; he just knows that he wants to stuff both of them in his mouth), it turns out, is _hard_. He likes to watch his husband –hair tied back with a scrunchie straight out of the 80s, apron around his waist- fold, cut, and roll dough, and he's helped before, but the rest of the process is frankly intimidating and there's so much _waiting_. That's the reason why Okuyasu, while his recipe is truly life-changing and has personally improved Josuke's existence, doesn't make them at home very often, preferring instead to buy them by the box at the bakery.

There aren't any croissants and/or cornetti today, alas, and Okuyasu cleaned out the yesterday, so he didn't even bother to rummage around in it. There isn't much of _anything_ left in the house except the beds, several boxes they haven't moved over to the new house yet, and Josuke's extensive array of hair products and makeup. He's just going to spend the day unpacking but he still has to look _cool_ , you know? His pride as a beautician depends on that.

"Josuke! Hey, Josuke! _Josuke_!" comes a voice directly next to his ear and he's so startled that he sends the box of cereal skittering across the floor as he vacates the counter. Shizuka materializes into view, looking not a bit sorry. Shizuka delights in catching people unaware. Josuke wishes, not for the first time in his life, he was an only child.

" _Shizuka, you little shit, I'm going to feed you to a lion_."

"You can't do that. I'm a baby. You can't feed a baby to anything; that's illegal. Are you a _criminal_ , Josuke?"

"Babiest bro," he says conspiratorially as he fetches a broom and dustpan, "the reason I'm here is because I used to be the leader of a punk-rock gang of stand users back in Morioh and I had to flee the country after my identity was exposed."

"Pfft, you're pop-punk at best," Shizuka says, and then her nose wrinkles in contemplation.

"…There aren't _really_ any stand gangs in Japan though, right? That's not _actually_ a thing? _Is_ it?"

"Isn't that a mystery? Anyway, did you need something, bro, or did you just want to be a brat?"

"I was _going_ to tell you that my _better_ bro brought back food last night if you wanted that but then you ate _all my cereal._ How could you do that, bruh?"

To that, Josuke takes the cereal still remaining in the box and tips it into his mouth, staring directly into her eyes all the while. She howls something about him being a complete monster and lobs the jar of peanut butter at him, which Crazy Diamond bats away. Shizuka sulks and fades back out of view, but Josuke is pretty sure, even if he can no longer see her, that she's making a rude gesture at him.

Shizuka is every inch Joseph Joestar's daughter and the rowdiness that entails. Josuke's not sure how Holly was raised by that man and turned out so _nice_ and _sweet_ and who has absolutely _never_ leapt out at him in a dark hallway and tried to put him in a Yes Lock.

He disposes the contents of the dust pan, puts away the broom, makes a mental note that he's either going to have to take out the trash or, on second thought, just have Okuyasu vanish everything with The Hand. His husband has (not often these days, no, but it's happened before, always in the early hours of the morning before the sun comes up when nothing stops their minds from wandering) contemplated what it means about him that his stand is so potentially lethal, but honestly, being able to eliminate messes on a whim is just _useful_.

"What'd he bring?"

" _I'm not telling you, you monster_."

"I guess I _won't_ buy you a peppermint mocha later."

Shizuka materializes, eyes narrowing.

"Make that a gingerbread latte with extra gingerbread and a cake pop."

" _Deal_. Did he bring back something from the restaurant?" Josuke asks hopefully. They have ginger-scallion noodles on the menu and while he objectively knows murder is Wrong with a capital W, he would personally destroy the owner and everything he loves if they ever stop offering it. Shizuka shakes her head and crushes his dreams in the process.

"No, but he told me he's going to bring back some fried chicken tomorrow. He also told me not to tell you because it's a surprise, but bro should know better by now than to trust me. Anyway, he stopped by Carota's and brought back some pasta and stuff? I called dibs on the garlic bread already, sorry."

Carota's is operated by a scruffy Italian chef that Josuke is almost certain is in Passione's pocket or perhaps a Passione operative himself, though he admittedly doesn't know much about the organization other than Jotaro's warnings to stay away from them. Higashikata Okuyasu and Marco Carota sometimes trade food from their respective kitchens on their way back home from work: oxtail soup for buridda; shiitake buns for bruschetta.

Stand users attract other stand users. Chefs attract other chefs. On one hand, they probably should keep a wide berth of anything and anyone remotely connected to that shady Italian organization whose tendrils creep into crime, politics, and more. On the other hand, Carota makes _really good_ garlic bread. Josuke knows where his priorities lie.

"You can't call dibs. I already called dibs on all garlic bread in this household like a week ago."

"Well, I called dibs on garlic bread a month ago."

" I called dibs before you were even _born_."

"I called dibs an _infinity_ ago."

"There's only one way to solve this, little buddy. I'll arm wrestle you for it."

Josuke does not get garlic bread today.

* * *

Josuke's life is packed in boxes laid out in the empty den, labeled with Okuyasu's shaky writing in blue marker. Some of these boxes are from his move from Morioh to New York, never unpacked; some of those are even from his stint in medical school before-

He does not finish that thought because nothing good has ever come from finishing that thought. He sets it aside in a recessed corner of his mind and he puts the battered old box full of textbooks in the very back of his new closet. Everything has its place and sometimes that place is somewhere it can be forgotten.

The new house is his but it doesn't _feel_ like his yet. It's empty and dark and unfamiliar, and honestly, he never really feels at home unless Okuyasu is losing at Mario Kart in the background. The old apartment had been hi s home since his first day in New York…no, no, that's wrong, it had been _their_ home, his and Okuyasu's. It was small and cramped, it was located too far from both of their places of work, the heating never worked properly in the winter, and it was _theirs_.

Joseph offered them his swanky downtown apartment when he first moved to the city chasing Okuyasu because it's not as if he was even living there at that point, but Josuke never felt fully comfortable in such an ostentatious place. When it came time to sorting out Joseph's will, Josuke hadn't wanted to accept the gift of this new home (not as lavish as the Joestar residence Shizuka grew up in, but grander than anything Josuke could have afforded on his own) from Joseph.

But then Emporio came into the picture.

Once it was determined that he and Okuyasu would be his new fathers, Josuke couldn't really say no to the gift of a new house. And besides that, there was Shizuka to consider; Shizuka who had already lost one elderly parent and then the other; Shizuka who he was _not_ going to let stay in an empty mansion by herself.

Shizuka who is currently digging through boxes with wild abandon trying to find something.

"Where is it, Josuke? _Where is it_?"

"We don't even have the television unpacked yet, buddy," he says, trying to steer her away from the box of kitchen goods she's currently dismantling in her search for videogames. At least, Josuke _assumes_ she's looking for her games. At any given time, Shizuka has only three things on her mind: wrestling, video games, and videogames about wrestling.

"I _know_ where the television is! But my record player isn't where I put it!"

Crazy Diamond scoops her up before she can do further damage to his organizational system (he had all those boxes labeled nice and neatly, and now they're in thorough disarray) and fixes the torn box as he goes, depositing her neatly a foot away.

"I don't think it got put in with Bro's mixing bowls, little dude."

"Okuyasu put one of your canes in with the box that's got all my headbands! That record player could be _anywhere_!"

"Well, yeah, it's purple, your headbands are mostly purple, you know? Same color. It makes _sense_."

"…Josuke, do you ever listen to yourself talk?"

They work together as a team unloading boxes until it gets to the point that Shizuka starts getting antsy for lunch and his bad leg aches too much from all the lifting and kneeling. Okuyasu and Josuke both wear scars from their childhoods: Okuyasu on his face and on his side, Josuke in a leg that throbs whenever it's cold.

Shizuka makes tea and they warm up the rest of the leftovers minus the bucatini with Okuyasu's name on it. Shizuka grabs the spaghetti and meatballs and Josuke takes the shrimp linguine with a spicy sauce he _should_ know the name of by now but doesn't.

"You know what I just remembered," he says in between mouthfuls of pasta. "I left a few boxes in the bedroom, so I bet your record player wound up there. Okuyasu's gonna bring those when he wakes up."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," he says, spearing a shrimp, "things got a little mixed up while I was packing but if it's not here, then it's gotta be there. He'll be here before long, don't worry."

"Alright. Alright. Alright, alright, alright. Uh. I kinda want to play the first song in this place, so, like, could you be a bro and just like… _not_ play any music in here until I get my record player back? It's dumb but I really, really wanna do that."

"That's no problem, dude."

"Cool. Cool beans, then. Chilly beans, even. _Ice cold beans_."

His sister pokes through the remains of her meal before pushing it aside in favor of sprawling out on the couch, fishing her cellphone out of her pocket. She's not big by any means (and especially not in comparison to _him_ ; he was a tiny thing until puberty kicked him like a sack of bricks and he shot up to 6'3") but she still has a remarkable habit of taking up every square inch of space on any surface she inhabits. It's fine, Josuke has the chair.

"You texting him?"

"I'm not texting someone every time I get my phone out, you know."

"I can see you texting from here," says Josuke. " Look, you just got a message. You just got another one."

"Fiiiiine. I know they're having their trip and I don't wanna, like, _intrude_ on their time together or whatever, but I texted Emporio and told him to send me a picture of Mickey Mouse. I guess they're at Magic Kingdom today or whatever."

Since he entered their lives (since he entered their _universe_ , something Josuke is still wrapping his head around but it's not as if he's entirely inexperienced with alternate timelines, even if he doesn't remember Bites the Dust), Emporio has been alternating between staying with Jotaro and Irene, but…

 _Jolyne_ died. She wears another name. Jotaro died. He wears another life. Okuyasu is not the only Higashikata who thinks on the nature of stands in the dusk hours, and Josuke knows that whatever he fixes with Crazy Diamond is never _exactly_ the same as before. It's close, yes, and when he has calm and peace of mind, few would notice anything different, even him, except on microscopic examination, but Okuyasu still has a scar, however thin and faint, where he mended his destroyed side. Perhaps this is just how mending things _works_. You try to revert it to how it was before but it still leaves cracks.

 _Emporio_ Alniño grew up in prison. _Emporio_ Alniño watched all his friends die, watched an entire world in its death throes, and witnessed the birth of something new. Josuke doesn't know if he's fully equipped to raise Emporio (is _anyone_ ever ready for fatherhood?), but hell, he's going to do the best he can and hope that's enough. Maybe that's all anyone can ever really do.

"It's not _intruding_. You're _family_."

"Well, I mean, yeah, but I'm not-"

Shizuka makes a vague hand gesture in the general direction of Florida.

"-I'm not part of the _apocalypse crew_ , you know? They've got this _thing_ and geeze, wow, that's kind of a _big_ thing, isn't it? But, like, that thing is becoming a _new_ thing or, like, it's already been a new thing, I guess? So it's an old thing that became a new thing and now _that_ new thing is becoming a _new_ new thing and, like, changing things is _complicated_ , you know what I'm saying? You wanna make the most you can of that squiggly time between the old stuff and new stuff 'cause if it gets taken away too fast, then, like, wow, it's all sudden and shit, uh, sorry, sudden and _stuff_ and you're like _whoa_ , things sure are happening, so you wanna vanish or… Uh, actually, sorry, forget I said anything, bro, that sounds dumb as _heck_. I just, I just don't wanna distract him too much while he's spending time with Irene and friends or whatever, like go meet Rafiki, little dude, that's a normal child thing."

"Hey… _hey_ , listen, Shizuka," begins Josuke, the right words so close but he's not sure if he can quite capture them. People often misinterpret his sister, take her boisterousness for callousness, take her roughness for emotional stupidity, and while driving her to yet another Saturday detention, he's often wondered if people would have the same reaction to her were she not a girl. She's raucous and unruly and at the end of the day, means well; she's a Joestar through and through.

But because of this misinterpretation, Shizuka, more often than not, wraps up her more sensitive feelings in a veneer of uncaring and flippancy, perhaps convinced that if she'll be misunderstood anyway, she might as well not even bother. When something emotional is on the line, she never has any faith in her words, embarrassed over every stumble and falter, and pokes at but never quite wants to reach what she's really trying to say.

"You're not _dumb_. I feel what you're saying but…we might not have that experience with Emporio, yeah, but you're not _intruding_ on him. So if you wanna call and say hi for a sec, I bet he'd really like it that he's got a cool aunt checking up on him. And you're not intruding on _me,_ for the record. We're all a crew."

Shizuka makes a small noise, draws her legs up to her chest, then laughs.

"We're the wicked sensitive crew. Um. I guess I will in a bit. I think they're going on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad right now. Emporio sent me a picture, see?"

She surrenders her phone to him (An act of trust because she doesn't even let _Okuyasu_ touch her phone and he's pretty sure she would take a bullet for him if push came to shove. Okuyasu has that effect on everyone he meets) and he takes it.

Emporio clutches the largest stuffed Stitch Josuke has ever seen in his life, a shy smile on his face. He imagines the people in the background are Irene and her new girlfriend, but it's honestly hard to tell because it's a blurry cellphone shot and he mostly just sees their legs. Josuke's only met Ermes the one time but if things work out and he suspects it will, then he supposes that's going to change.

Josuke does not hide his grin. This is his kid and he can't wait to hear about Disney World.

* * *

Okuyasu is taking his time. Josuke isn't worried, all is well, but he craves every moment with him. His husband is a chef, and on the weekends, he works long into the night and wakes up late. He doesn't do this for fortune or fame (though Okuyasu is moving swiftly up in the culinary world; Josuke clips every magazine article mentioning his name) but because it's his art and he's _good_ at his art.

Josuke is never more attracted to his husband than when they're curled up on the couch together, the television a dim thrum, Okuyasu describing in lavish detail a dish he's planning on making. Josuke has a _husband_. The word tastes like honey in his mouth. _Husband_. When no one else is around, he repeats it to himself, marveling. When he was still sixteen, before Okuyasu made the first faltering move on him, Josuke often hoped but he never thought it would actually be something he'd be able to say.

 _ **Okuyasu**_ _is my husband, Okuyasu is my_ _ **husband**_ _, Okuyasu is_ _ **my**_ _husband_.

It's a sentence that sounds sweet no matter how it's said.

He'll be here soon enough. Josuke just has to learn patience, however hard that might be. Okuyasu wakes up late because he's a chef and Josuke wakes up early because he's a beautician and every grandmother in New York books a 7 o'clock appointments at his salon because they love his pompadour and orchid lipstick.

"I'm going to go get coffee," he says at last, more because he needs something to do that isn't unpacking boxes than because he actually likes coffee. Besides, he _did_ bribe Shizuka with Starbucks, and if he reneged on his promises, he'd never be able to get her to do anything at all.

His leg will disagree with walking out in the cold, already aggravated from moving boxes around, but it's not enough to dissuade him from going out. It always hurts in winter, no matter how kindly he treats himself. Sure, sure, it may not _technically_ be winter yet, but if the wind howls and the snow comes down and the ice sticks to everything, it's well and truly winter no matter what it might call itself.

Kira died under an ambulance's wheel years ago and left him with a bad leg and recurring nightmares of watching his husband die. It's not the same as what happened to most of his victims (he's _alive_ ), but Josuke resents that he's marked by _him_ even now, resents that Shizuka grew up without her first mother, resents that Okuyasu almost _died_.

Shizuka is no longer searching for her record player, content to wait for Okuyasu to bring the rest of the boxes, but she _has_ begun search for her NES. Joseph kept his youngest daughter well-supplied in every top-of-the-line console, but she finds something alluring in pixel graphics, and quite frankly, she plays Kirby's Adventure like they're in Egypt and her soul is on the line.

She looks up from rifling through a box of towels that her console absolutely isn't in.

"Do you need help carrying stuff or are you good?"

"Nah, I'm good, bro. Crazy D's got my back."

Shizuka is absolutely _destroying_ all his work of folding those nice and neatly.

"Also, you're folding all of those back up."

"Pay me $20 and I will stop."

"Not on your life."

There isn't a coffee shop far from the house – _his_ house, he reminds himself- because they pop up like mushrooms around here, one right after another. He puts on his winter jacket (or rather, one of many winter jackets because Josuke is _Josuke_ and possibly the only person alive on earth who's more into planning outfits is _Rohan_ ) and heads out, though not before begging Shizuka to please clean up whatever mess she might make as her hunt continues.

When he walks outside, snowflakes fall and cling to his eyelashes (" _They're so long",_ his mother once said. " _You don't appreciate how lucky you are_.") before the heat of his body melts them, his breath a cloud of white. Josuke hates the winters here, never the biggest fan of the season at all. The sky turns dark too early, the cold settles into his bones. It reminds him of sweat and fever, of huddling in the backseat of his mother's car.

Deterred by the snow, not as many people roam the streets as they typically do on a weekend, but even still, the city bustles on. He turns his collar to the cold and onward he goes. He's walked these streets before, of course, when checking out the house previously, but this is his first day living here and he's not as intimately familiar with the businesses and residence that line it as he was at the old house.

There's a frozen yogurt place. Shizuka will like that and he will too, though Okuyasu perpetually laments their popularity. It's not that he _dislikes_ frozen yogurt. It's just that if it's readily available, he can and _will_ spend entirely too much money on compiling a monster cup resplendent with gummy worms, sprinkles, three kinds of chocolate, boba, cookies, and strawberry sauce and it _will_ make him sick. Okuyasu is a man who orates on the delicate taste of fiddlehead ferns in spring. He's also a man that's regularly caught eating sugar cubes by the mouthful.

He passes a gym, and wonders if he ought to look into their membership prices since the one they currently attend is a ways away now, but then he remembers that the only thing Okuyasu loves more than him is the weight rack at their current one, so he shelves that idea.

A bakery he'll most likely visit in the next couple weeks. A pizza joint he'll _definitely_ visit in the next couple weeks. A laundry. A corner store. He makes notes in his head of where they are, what they are, and onward he goes.

Josuke regrets not taking the car a little, even if it's just a relatively short distance, but lessons learned. Just a few more minutes until he can warm up, however briefly, while he orders before heading back to the house. It won't be long now. He passes by an alley and thinks little of it, but in the edges of vision, he catches a flash of red on white snow.

He does not think in situations like this. His body takes over, mind a comfortable blur.

A quick glance to assess the situation. One man with a knife, no gun in sight, no visible stand. Another man huddled on the ground, skin bloodless white where it's not red, red, _red_.

Cane to the assailant's arm, knocks the knife away, wet with someone else's blood. Crazy Diamond manifests, jerks him away from the fallen man, grabs a handful of hair, throws him aside with a resounding thud. Gargled curses but with the strength of his stand pinning him to the ground, he won't get up for a minute, he thinks.

If anyone happens to pass by and notice the altercation, they give no indication.

Later that night, Josuke will think about this incident and, with old memories rising in his throat like bile, panic that something like this happened so close to his home, but if he learned one thing from his childhood, it's that terrible things happen anywhere, no matter how seemingly safe.

You do your best to stop them and if you can't, then you do your best to help however you're needed.

Josuke cannot tell if the man on the ground lives or not, cannot tell where exactly the wound is because his entire midsection is awash in blood, soaking the fabric of his pants as he curls inwards on himself. He crouches to better assess the situation at eye-level, though his leg protests.

( _and every time josuke sees blood, he's sixteen again and he's losing okuyasu before his eyes and this fucking serial killer is gloating in front of him and he feels so helpless and there's so much blood and they're just children, reimi was just a child, okuyasu was supposed to have a better life than this and he's losing him, it's not_ _ **fair**_ )

"Hey, are you…" he says and the words suddenly dry up in his throat because it seems so _flippant_ to start off with 'hey' when there's someone who could very well be _dead_ if he's not actively on his way there.

"He can't hurt you anymore. You're going to be just fine, okay?"

And Josuke does not trust the words that come out of his mouth because he's increasingly sure he's too late, but then the man trembles, does not gasp for air so much as gag on his own blood, and Josuke knows that while there is still breath, there is still hope.

Crazy Diamond does not need to punch to mend things. Josuke _likes_ to punch things, if only for the unadulterated thrill of uppercutting a record player back into working order, but it's not necessary. Just a touch, a brush against his hand, and that's all he needs.

He restores what's torn. Slashed wounds become smooth flesh. The pavement is bloodied no more. A thread of reality perpetually grasping towards what's _supposed_ to come next finally reaches its ending, and far away in Italy, a singer feels a trembling in her heart she hasn't felt in awhile and knows that something's finally reaching its end.

An arrow pierced Giorno Giovanna's Gold Experience and it sang its Requiem, but the change in Crazy Diamond, the power to restore the intangible in addition to flesh, cannot be attributed to such an explanation.

He thinks about Reimi sometimes, thinks about the ghost girl with the back too horrifically butchered for words.

He thinks about a young boy who died a senseless and agonizing death.

He thinks too often about Kira's parting gifts to him: dread seizing his lungs right when he thinks he's finally over everything; numbness settling into the deepest parts of him; the nagging feeling that he peaked when he was sixteen and everything after that has been a slow climb downwards ever since.

Lately, he thinks a lot about his son who visits the ghosts of places and now people, and he wonders if his stand changed to compliment Burning Down the House long before he ever met Emporio. Josuke's been thinking a lot about everything recently.

Whatever the reason, Crazy Diamond bridges the damaged gap between cause and effect, listens to a Requiem and tells it _no_ with just the smallest whisper of a chime as he reaches into the spirit to restore him to what he was before or, at least, the closest he's going to get without a body. This is the power of Crazy Diamond's Division Bell.

Josuke immediately knows that _something_ is up because there are only a few specific scenarios where the Division Bell rings out instead of Crazy Diamond's standard healing.

He's a wild-haired punk whose aesthetic he'd take a moment to admire if not for the fact that he's trembling in the cold (' _the lace and fishnets are sick as hell but where is his shirt did the mugger take it he can't have gone out in this weather wearing only_ _ **that**_ _could he'_ ) and his blood was more out than in only seconds before. There's a horrified " _what the fuck_ _ **are**_ _you_?!", the noise of someone trying to get away as quickly as possible, and then the assailant flees the alley.

Well, that's not _ideal_. That's not ideal at all. Josuke doesn't like the thought that there's attempted murderers in his city and so close to his house, doesn't like the thought that someone _else_ might get hurt, but he still has a handful of his hair and the number of half a dozen stand users in the East Village alone, so tracking him down shouldn't be an issue.

"It looked kinda hairy there for a second, man, but see? Right as rain."

The man had been curled up so tightly against himself that Josuke struggled to even see his face, but at his words (or maybe just at the realization that he's not bleeding to death anymore), the man runs a shaky hand down to the spot where he gushed blood just seconds before and, finding nothing, lifts his head up (and he can tell now that he's his age or just a little bit older) to stare with dawning horror not at Josuke but a little to the left and behind him, his pupils pinpricks.

Josuke is used to confusion from those he heals. How can people _not_ be confused? You're dying, then you're not. You're bleeding, then you're not. You hurt, but then it's like you were never in pain at all. It might as well be sorcery and maybe it is.

It's just that most people can't _see_ Crazy Diamond.

" _Vaffanculo_ _! Non ti avvicinare_!"

If the man was trembling before, he's quaking now and not just because of the cold. Josuke lets Crazy Diamond dissolve into the aether. No sense distressing him further.

"I'm sorry. I'll leave. I hope that you feel better now," Josuke says once he remembers the words. He learned his Italian secondhand from Okuyasu (his husband is hard on himself, thinks he's stupid, but he has a knack for linguistics and can tell someone to get wrecked in no less than nine languages) and while the trip he took to go to Yukako's wedding in Naples helped, he's rusty.

He rises to leave, but then the man calls out to him, frantic and pleading.

" _Do not leave me._ Please. Please do not leave me here. You, you speak Italian, American? I haven't heard it in so long."

" I speak Italian poorly but I do speak it," Josuke says.

As far as he's concerned, he's not American, he just lives here at the moment, but he sees little point correcting him at the moment.

"Does anything else hurt? Do you need any more help?"

The man pulls his knees up snugger against himself, presses his palms tight against his eyes, shutting out even the suggestion of light, and Josuke is not sure but he thinks he might be crying.

"You cannot, you _cannot_ help me, I don't feel anything, I don't understand what's happening, why is this…why did it _stop_? _How_?! _What did you_ _**do**_ _to me_?! "

"I fix things and I fix people and sometimes I fix souls," says Josuke. "That's the power of Crazy Diamond. I didn't mean to scare you with him but I couldn't let you _die_. I didn't know you could see him."

And if he can see stands, then that means he probably _has_ one, albeit one that he hasn't materialized yet. This could be dangerous, Josuke realizes, but he still has to take the chance to help.

"You cannot fix my soul," the man mutters and then he shivers even harder and now he's _definitely_ crying and Josuke thinks that he isn't supposed to be witnessing this.

"It wasn't meant to stop, it wasn't meant to _stop_ , this cannot be real, this is not reality, it wasn't meant to _stop_. I've been dying for so long. Do you understand? I've been dying over and over and over again."

And now the man is wracked by sobs with nothing pretty or delicate about it but with the desperation of someone who knows that crying won't make him feel any better but who is powerless to stop it, the sort of crying that scorches the lungs and leaves an ache deep in the ribs after. Josuke sees people crying and his first instinct is to hug them and tell them it's going to be okay like his mother used to when he skinned his knees, but he doesn't know this man at all and anyway, he pled with him not to come closer and he respects that.

Josuke doesn't know what to make of his words. Dying over and over again? A stand attack? His assailant fled within seconds of him healing the man, so perhaps he saw Crazy Diamond and grew fearful, but then again, watching a man you've stabbed suddenly heal with little explanation is probably _terrifying_ , though probably not as terrifying as actually _being_ stabbed.

"I'm not sure but it's over now. Everything is going to be okay. But, listen, you'll get…chilled, that's the word, without a coat. Please take mine, alright? It's okay."

The man quiets, lets his hands fall to the side so he can blearily look at him, eyes red, dark lipstick smeared. Josuke offers him his coat and he looks at it as if he's afraid it's going to reach out and strangle him, but after a moment's contemplation, he takes it, drapes himself in it.

"…Thank you."

"You're welcome. Do you need help getting up?"

The man's eyes dart between the spot where Crazy Diamond had been a short time ago and his outstretched hand. Josuke's breath comes out in white clouds but the punk on the ground is breathing so shallowly that there's nothing at all. It seems he comes to a decision at last and reaches out towards Josuke.

His hand passes right through him.

His hand passes right through him and he feels a chill settle into his bones colder than the snow on the ground, colder than the grave.

' _I've been dying for so long. Do you understand? I've been dying over and over and over again.'_

When he heals with Crazy Diamond, he mostly knits the tangible back together with a punch or a touch, but sometimes –rarely, rarely, but sometimes-there's the soft sound of bells as it reverts something broken in the soul. He frees the cursed; he brings relief to spirits.

( _you couldn't tell if he was living or dead you healed him and hoped for the best while there's still breath there's still hope but was he ever_ _ **actually**_ _breathing at all the Division Bell rang out he was dead all this time_ )

Josuke reaches into his pockets to put on the gloves he should have been wearing all along with the nip in the air. It takes more than mere cloth to warm a ghost-touched hand but he needs a barrier when he tries again.

The Italian strokes his own hand, fingers brushing upwards to his wristbands. Pats the ground, finds it solid. Hesitates. Punches the earth and sinks into it past the elbows before pulling himself out.

"Spirits don't have to think to touch objects," says Josuke. "Otherwise, you'd sink into the ground every time you stopped concentrating on walking. If you think about it, then you can pass through. People are different. You'll pass through automatically, and if you aren't careful, the intersection of their soul and your soul will tear you apart. I don't know why it's like that."

"…Then I am dead at last," the man says with tangible relief. "I've been dying all the ways a man can die -thousands and thousands of times- but I have never been able to find escape. _Thank you_. Is this…is this all there is? Is this _all_? I thought…but perhaps that _was_ hell. Are you dead as well?"

"Me? No, no, I'm alive," Josuke says with a small laugh. He died horrifically once in an explosion but he doesn't think time loops caused by stands count towards your mortality status.

"I'm just a magnet for the weird, so I've talked to a _lot_ of ghosts. Here, grab my hand now. Gloves help. It's easier to touch with a barrier in the way."

He reaches out again and Josuke can feel the cold of the void through his gloves as the spirit rises to his feet.

"So, listen, ah-"

"Diavolo. My name was Diavolo of Sardegna, and when I lived, I thought myself to be an emperor of all I touched but I was just a fool and now I am dead and in an alley far from my home."

Now is not the time to say it but holy shit, _that is the coolest name ever_.

"Josuke of Morioh. I dress hair and talk to ghosts. Listen, I don't know the circumstances that led to you coming to this alley and maybe that's none of my business, but you should move on as soon as you're ready for it, okay? It's not good for you to linger here too long, but if you do, keep these things in mind. You can freely enter empty rooms but you need permission to enter any place occupied by the living. Most people can't see you. You can touch the living but if _they_ touch _you_ , it'll rip your spirit apart, so stay away from places where people might brush up against you. You'll also want to avoid..."

When Josuke departs the alley, the spirit lingers behind, still clad in his coat though it cannot warm him. His leg aches in these temperatures; his ghost-touched hand burns coldly.

Jotaro believes in avoiding other stand users as much as possible but Jotaro also wears anaconda-print pants with track jackets, so that really tells you all you need to know right there about Dr. Kujo. Josuke knows the value of making friends. Sometimes you have to fight nearly to the death before you earn their friendship (which is how a worrisomely large amount of lifelong friendships in his peer group started) but it's worth it.

A quick call to Birdie Fitzgerald who works at that speakeasy that Yukako likes when she visits. She should be free this time of day and her Pathetique is suited for what needs to be done.

It's simple enough to track the assailant down with a handful of his hair and Crazy Diamond. Josuke can't go to the cops with this because attempted murder of the dead (or those perpetually caught between death and life, as the case may be) isn't illegal, though morally shady, but also Josuke avoids the NYPD on principle. When they find him at last, Pathetique ensures he's incapable of harming another person again lest he feel it himself.

Later, as he walks home in a borrowed coat with those coffees at last, he makes eye contact across the street with the ghost of Diavolo, still lingering. He gives a nod as he passes and heads back to his husband.

* * *

Okuyasu proposed to Josuke with a calamari ring in the kitchen one summer night and Josuke thinks about it every time he eats squid now. That's just the kind of person Okuyasu is and he loves him for it.

Okuyasu went completely gray by the time he hit twenty-five. Josuke started dying it for him the last year of high school (really just an excuse to run his fingers through his hair, which in retrospect, really should have been a giant indication that he was gay, but you live and learn), but Okuyasu eventually decided to stop.

Josuke's glad of that because Okuyasu looks _good_ like this: head thrown back, grey curls brushing the sides of his face, laughing while he dips Shizuka as they dance together to the dulcet tones of Eat It.

 _Oh_. That's why she was so desperate to find her record player. Shizuka inherited the entirety of Joseph's record collection, the complete discography of Weird Al included. When she was a toddler, he'd sit her on his knee and they'd listen together. She plays one at least one every day since he passed a few months ago.

Okuyasu's going to be _such_ a good father. He _is_.

"Hey, Mr. Higashikata. Babiest bro," Josuke says, closing the door behind him. "I come bearing coffee-flavored sugar. Sorry it took so long."

Okuyasu smiles every time Josuke calls him Mr. Higashikata. Josuke smiles every time Okuyasu calls _him_ Mr. Higashikata. Sometimes he'll call him that name and then Okuyasu does it right back and it just becomes a loop of the two calling each other Mr. Higashikata that usually doesn't end until they start making out against the kitchen counter.

Josuke likes sharing a name. He likes sharing everything. Okuyasu deserves everything he has, all of him, and more. Romance is the glint of your husband's wedding ring and the funny twitter in your heart when he laughs at silly songs.

"Mr. Higashikata, you're looking-"

Okuyasu is interrupted by an irate teenager.

" _Dude, what the fu- frick, Josuke, it's been like two hours, I thought you, like, died_ _or something_."

He sets the coffee down on the coffee table, which is, wow, that's the first time he's actually used that thing for its intended purpose, isn't it? The coffee table is usually just the place he dumps mail he promises to sort through and never does. Sometimes he props his feet up on it as he plays videogames even though he scolds Shizuka for doing the exact same thing.

"Mmhm, which is why you're dancing instead of roaming the streets looking for me. You monster."

"I mean, if someone killed you, what the heck am I supposed to do about it: turn invisible at them until they change their wicked ways? I was dancing for my own safety, my good dude."

"Sure, sure, Shizuka. _Monster_."

He peels off the jacket he borrowed from Fitzgerald and hangs it up on the coat rack. It's white with oddly-placed cutouts like something that belongs in Rohan's closet. At least, it _looks_ like something Rohan would wear, but then again, Rohan is notoriously picky about fashion, which is really remarkable since he dresses like someone' s pen-loving grandpa half the time.

He drapes the scarf in its designated place followed by his gloves and then his cane. He doesn't carry it with him every day, but between moving boxes, the cold, and entirely too much walking, his thigh burns with every step and he really just wants to flop onto the couch and not move for a few hours, which is _very_ doable.

He's going to call his son before he becomes a lifeless bump on the couch.

He has a _son_.

He has a _son_. He and his _husband_ have a _son_. He has a son and he has a husband and he has a bratty little sister who steals all his snacks. Kira left him with scars and nightmares and a prescription list, but fuck him wherever he is, Josuke has a family and he's never going to take that away from him.

"You okay, bro?"

And then there's strong arms around his waist and the brush of Okuyasu's lips against his neck and he smells like his aftershave and home. Josuke leans into his touch, twines his fingers with his, feels the life entering back into his hand.

"It's been a _weird_ day but yeah. I'm okay. I am _super_ okay, dude."

And he _is_.


End file.
